 Good morning, everyone. My name is Kevin Carey. I'm the director of the Education Policy Program here at New America. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for coming here for what is going to be a great discussion on a rainy Thursday morning in Washington, DC. So extra welcome for coming through the raindrops to be here with us this morning. About a new poll on higher education that we at New America have published today. It's really interesting. We are going to spend a lot of time this morning both digging really deep into the results of the poll, but then also bringing a lot of the people represented in the poll, students, practitioners, to come and talk and really dig through a lot of the interesting dimensions of the issue. So I'm just going to start with a few opening thoughts before turning it over to our experts. The poll is on higher education. And I think the good news is that Americans really believe in higher education. And I feel like maybe now, especially, something that we can all believe in together, regardless of our political affiliations or ideas about different things, feels especially important. And this poll suggests that we are, as a society, as a polity, as a culture, remain very committed to higher education as an engine of economic opportunity, something that we believe in, and that both in general and that we want for ourselves and for our children. But or however, and I think a lot of the most interesting things about this poll come into, however, part of it, once you get beyond that general support, you start to find some really interesting ideas and perceptions among the general public. Although people believe in higher education generally, they are not satisfied with the specific institutions and policies that we have in place right now. They are broadly dissatisfied. The poll, and you'll be able to go online and actually play around with this yourself. And we'll show it to you in a few minutes. Break down the respondents. It's a poll of 1,600 people by their age, by their backgrounds, by their political leanings. And there are some interesting differences in there. But broadly speaking, people are not happy with the specific system of higher education we have now. And we can think what's happened and the different reasons for that. But one of the really striking findings that I think come out of there is that people feel that colleges and universities are putting their own interests ahead of those of student interests. They believe in them generally, but they don't think that the system is working for students. And that's true in different ways for different kinds of people. So we at New America feel like the results of this poll actually can be very positive in that they really, they are evidence for a strong bipartisan foundation for higher education reform. People believe in it generally, but they want it to be better. They are not satisfied with the arrangements we have now. They are not satisfied with the institutions that we have now. They are not satisfied with the policies we have now. They think we can do better. They think we need to do better. And we think they're right about that. So again, I thank you for coming in with that. I'm going to quickly yield the podium to our senior higher education analyst and the leader of this project, Rachel Fishman, who is going to give us a great presentation, breaking down all the numbers, showing you how you can break down all the numbers. And from there, we've got a couple of really terrific panels lined up, and it's going to be a great discussion this morning. So, Rachel. Good morning, everyone. It's so heartening to see a full house given the weather, which is awful. So I thank you so much for joining us today as we launch this data and the data tool. So I'm going to discuss the findings of our first annual survey that Kevin alluded to in his open remarks. This survey is about how America perceives and what they know about higher education. And it's our hope that these findings are going to provide a crucial background about America's thoughts and feelings on higher education. And we can then use this data to help inform discussions that both the media has and the policymaking community has. So the full write-up of the methodology, including all the scientific, plus or minus 2.8 percentage points is online at varyingdegrees.org. But to give you a little bit of background, we conducted this survey and went into field right after the inauguration. And we collected cell phone and landline interviews of 1,600 Americans ages 18 plus. We included boosts of African American, Asians, Hispanics, and also current undergraduate students to help improve our statistical power when filtering with these results. The survey shows both unifying themes, as well as differences across a whole host of demographics, age, gender, generation, region, socioeconomic status, race, student status, educational attainment, political ideology. And we explored the themes of the value of a college education, who is responsible for student success, the ideal role of government, and the goal of higher education itself. So first one I'm going to go over is some of our top findings. And then I'm gonna go through some of the findings a little bit more in detail. So Americans are split in their belief about whether there are lots of well-paying jobs that require a college degree. So slightly over half agree that there are lots of well-paying jobs that do not require going to college. However, there is wide belief, three out of four people say that in the end, it's easier to be successful with a college degree than without. So although people are kind of mixed with whether or not jobs are available without that degree, they certainly agree that if you have the degree, you're more likely to be successful. So this survey shows that Americans are valuing the importance of a college degree, but they believe that higher education is falling short of this promise. So only one in four agree that our higher education system is functioning fine just the way it is. And we're hoping that the panelists are gonna provide some context as to why this could be a case. We didn't then ask, well, why is it not fine? A lot of it probably has to do with price and cost, but there's probably more to unpack within that. And then there is belief that higher ed is falling short of its promise. So over half believe that institutions need to be student focused and that it's the case that students are not the ones solely responsible for the success of their students that institutions also have to be helping students to cross the finish line. So now I'd like to unpack the results a little bit further. So it's clear that the Americans think that it's getting harder to achieve the American dream in terms of finding a good paying job and being able to afford a family. So we asked people, you know, is it harder now than it was for your parents to find a good job and be able to afford a family? And overall three out of five think it's harder to find a well paying job. And just over three out of five feel the same way when it comes to affording a family. When we broke this out by generation, the oldest generation, the silent generation was the one that actually wouldn't agree with this because their parents actually grew up during the Great Depression, so that makes sense. But everybody else is pretty much aligned with, you know, it's getting harder and harder for all of us. As the data have shown, the American dream is falling further out of reach, but higher education is seen as important to being successful in this economy in terms of if you have that credential, you are more likely to be successful. However, there's this expectations gap between what higher education should be and what it currently is. So 58% of Americans see college leaders as putting the long term interests of their own institutions ahead of those of their students. And while Americans agree that most who enroll benefit, so nearly four out of five say this to be the case, too few have a decent chance of getting into a good college. So only 42% of Americans think all Americans have a decent chance of getting into a good college. This is indicative of that access problem. And then we all know a lot of people in the room that we have this access problem, but we also know that there is this completion problem. And Americans are aware that many students leave before completing their degree. Only 46% think it's true that most people who go to college finish with a degree. And so then we asked also trying to gauge, do people see this as a personal benefit, an individual benefit, or is higher education seen more as a social societal good? And as it turns out, 62% see higher ed being more as good for society rather than a benefit to students. And when you include people who think both of those things, both an individual and a private good, the number goes up to over 70%. So it's clear that from this data that okay, it's a good for society, and this is sort of regardless of demographic. We thought it was really interesting that conservatives and liberals aligned on this issue. We thought maybe conservatives would think it was more an individual benefit, but no, that's not the case. Across the board, regardless of demographic, people see higher education as more of a societal good. However, it's clear that we're not funding it that way or Americans don't perceive us to be funding it that way. Students and families are seen as picking up most of the tab with government being seen as picking up less than half the associated costs. And so there's a lot going on with this slide, but we asked about specific colleges and universities. So two-year community colleges, four-year public universities, and the private four-year institutions and the for-profit universities. And then we asked each of these questions that you see on the top columns. And as you can see that two-year and four-year public universities lead in many categories. They're seen as especially worth the cost compared to other sectors and for people in my situation. And so I'm just gonna let this sink in. But I think this is really good news for community colleges, especially. I think when we started this work, not knowing what the American public would actually think because we're really in the weeds on this stuff, I would have said, I would have been shocked to see how positively community colleges are being viewed given that, you know, I think there's maybe some stigma surrounding what it is to go to a community college or what it is to be a community college student. But actually our data show that that is not the case. And I do wonder if we had done this survey four years ago, what the data, or 10 years ago, what the data would have looked like, would have looked less rosy for the community college sector, would it have looked rosier for the for-profit sector, who's experienced a lot of very public decline over the last couple of years. Would the four-year public sector 10 years ago been looked more positively because it was more invested in, and as we've witnessed all the disinvestment, the students and families have been facing higher and higher prices? And so I think moving forward, as we're just, this is our first annual poll, this is the baseline, it will be interesting to see how some of these sentiments change over time. And so I'm gonna put a tool in if you haven't visited our data at varyingdegrees.org. There's a whole bunch of information there, including the report narrative. We focused on differences among generations, but we also have this cool data tool that you can, on the left side, as you see, you can actually scroll through all the questions we ask. You can then just see what the results are overall, but you can also filter by all the demographics I discussed at the beginning. Not only that, you can embed these images into any blogs that you're working on or any web material that you're working with, or you can actually download the images and place them into any sort of report you're writing, anything that will help you out. So we really wanted to be public with the data and we wanted you to be able to plug and play this data as you see fit over time. And you also picked up these perception versus reality sheets when you came in. So they, so you can see how the perception of Americans actually matches up to the reality of what our higher education financing structure looks like and what today's students look like. If you go online, you can take a quiz to see if you actually know the reality of what the higher education financing system and today's student looks like. But of course, like if you have this sheet, you'd be cheating. So don't look at the sheet before you take it or look at it and I expect all of you to get 100% on it. So that's a really fun little tool that we've included. So what I'd like to do right now is open it up for any questions that people might have about the data. I'm happy to answer. Otherwise, we're gonna go into the first panel. We have a microphone. So that people who are live streaming, hello, people who did not come through the rain to visit us today. So that they can hear your question. So you surveyed 1600 folks. Can you tell us a little bit about why 1600 and how you found those 1600 and why that was the right number? Sure. So initially, for a national representative poll, it's usually around a thousand, a little over a thousand people that you would interview. As I mentioned, we did boost for African-American, Latino and Asian and current undergraduate students in order that we would have a large enough end size that we could say we could make conclusions about those different groups. And so that's how we ended up getting to 1600. That's why it's a little bit larger than maybe what you're used to seeing. If you're looking at a governmental poll and it says we've surveyed 1,002 Americans, plus or minus 3%. This one was higher because we did those boosts. We found undergraduate students by looking at an Ipsos, by the way, fielded this survey. So they were the ones who did the whole methodology and you can read about it online, but they went to, they looked where a lot of college students would be, so college towns. So our current undergraduate sample is probably trends, the boost itself trends more towards traditionally aged residential students, but overall, we also got a considerable amount of that sample from the non-boosted portion and those are reflective of non-traditional students. That makes sense. Any other questions? There's one in the back. The microphone is coming. Thank you. I wondered what your feelings are on what I've seen on television, a news report on hiring in New York City. They indicated that a four year degree, college degree was the equivalent of what high school used to be for a file clerk. There were that many applicants so they merely upgraded the educational requirements. Do you see this continuing as a problem or is it a problem? What are your feelings on something like this? So I think it's hard to say because we didn't ask anything specifically pertaining to that, but I can say that I think this might be some of that feeling that goes into one in four people saying higher education is not fine, how it currently operates. I think some of that is the anxiety people are feeling of up credentialing, the price of higher education, the connection between higher education and workforce, which we're gonna hear more about in our second panel, which will probably provide great context for that. But I do know in the online web portion of the report, I interviewed someone, the personal story I share is Megan. And Megan went to college, she got her bachelor's degree, she studied to work in a museum and she entered the workforce when it was the downturn. And in 2008 is when she graduated. So she graduated right into the brunt of the economic recession and she only just obtained her first full-time job at the age of 28. And she argues that, did she need her college degree to even get the full-time job that she has? Probably not, but it's starting to be like everybody who has that job has a college degree and she feels very mixed about higher education. She's like, I would definitely do it again. I recommend that everybody go on to college, but I just, in a way, I just wish it wasn't so expensive. I have a little star on there, I wish it was just a little bit different. So I feel like we saw that sentiment in that one out of four, believe that higher education is operating okay, which means that approximately three out of four think that something needs to change with the system. And so I think that's coming at all angles, both with moving through the workforce from higher education. Oh, that's a question. So Rachel, we're in Washington, DC and you said you pulled up some demographics also looking by political affiliation. Was there something that stood out in the survey of variance because you shared where you saw consistency even when you broke it out by political affiliation? Something that stood out to you was the variance by looking at by political affiliation. Sure, and I'd like to mention to you, that is a great comment and Deb has actually helped us with this work by sitting on our advisory board. For this work. But so you are able to download the data from the data tool so that you can actually upload it into data or whatever you wanna do and play with it yourself. You're also able to download the cross tabs and on the cross tabs are statistical significant. So where you wanna see, were there statistical significant differences between liberal versus conservative? And we saw some interesting differences, I think especially when it came to the for-profit sector, conservatives tended to view the for-profit sector more positively than compared to liberals. So I thought that was one that jumped out at me and didn't surprise me necessarily. But I think some of the most surprising findings about the liberal versus conservative is actually where people align. Because when we talk about moving forward and crafting policy and having these discussions, it's gonna be more about where they align. And honestly, like I said, when we went into this work, I really thought there was gonna be a difference in between conservatives viewing higher education more as an individual benefit, because we constantly hear this, like individual benefits, individuals should pay. And so we thought that was gonna be what people were going to say. And then that was our hypothesis and it was totally proven wrong by this data because they're totally aligned, conservatives and liberals, when it comes to you, this is something that is a good for society. And my question after that is, well, why aren't we funding it that way? And so I think I'd like to turn it over now to the student panel. So we're really excited to have some students in the room to talk about their experiences with higher ed. So we're first gonna hear from current students and how they view higher ed and hear them speak about some of these survey results. And then we're gonna hear from some policy experts and institutional leaders on how we can translate America's perceptions to policy. So I'm gonna ask the students to come up and our moderator is here. She is just getting ready and we'll be forward shortly. So if the students could come up. But thank you and be sure to visit the tool. And also I do have to make a big plug and say that my colleagues, Ernest Aswago, Manuela Acoho, and Tyler Richardet were amazing at getting this off the ground and we really couldn't have done it without them. I have to say we got the data back about six weeks ago and this is what we turned it into. And our web developer Kirk did an amazing job with the tool, so I can't, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank them because this was truly a team effort on the New America side. And so now I'm gonna turn it over to Daniel Duncan. I'm gonna turn it over to Daniel Douglas Gabriel and we have our three students. So we have Lindsay Shurtliff from Nova Community College along with Ariel from Nova Community College and Jemesco who is a Southern New Hampshire university student and I believe two of you are graduating very soon. So congratulations to them. And so we're really excited to hear what you have to say and thank you so much for joining us this morning and I'm gonna turn it over to Daniel. Thank you guys so much for joining us. My name is Daniel Douglas Gabriel, I'm a reporter at The Washington Post and I cover the economics of higher education and we are trying our best to look at the full universe of students as well as faculty and how higher education is changing and I think that's why it's so great to have these three students with us today. Guys let's start off by you telling me a little bit about what your experience was like applying to college and you can talk about the support systems and just overall how you would characterize that. Feel free to go down there. Okay so the first time around because I went to college first out of high school I applied to a bunch of schools and so you've got fees and different essays and it was fine, it worked well and the same time the second time around just applying to all different schools again with the fees, again with the essays but it worked out, it was good. I'm starting out so I started out with the intention of going to a community college it was right down the road from where I lived in California and but I did feel a little bit of pressure to go to Cal State four year school and so I went that avenue and I really didn't feel very successful I only went two semesters and then went to the community college and after that I took a 10 year break and my husband who was in the community college at that time he finished his degree and he went the path of community college to four year and to finish up at law school and so he went that path and then now I'm back in but I'm pursuing a specific degree which is dental hygiene so for me it was very specific and applying for that program was quite a challenge coming back in because it's such a competitive program so that's kind of been my experience and I'm just finishing up my first year so I have one more year to go but I think it was a good experience. For myself I honestly didn't think that college was within reach I barely graduated high school with a 1.6 GPA so I really college just wasn't in the picture I did one semester in 2009 and I failed every class so essentially I didn't really focus on it for five years until I hit the glass ceiling at my job and at that point I was also a father so I knew that I needed to obtain education to financially empower my family and myself and so five years later here I am trying to get my foot back in the door to access college and how am I gonna pay for college I was fortunate enough to have joined a program in Northern Virginia Community College where they have advisors specializing in case management and they pretty much individualized my case and they were able to help me get my foot back in the door as far as just applying for admission to college cause I didn't even know how to do that they walked me through the financial aid process and they pretty much broke down everything I needed to know to balance my work and personal life and school life as well so that really enabled me to be successful in college and just make it easy to access college as well. So it feels like the advisement piece was really important for you so I'm wondering for two of you who transferred what was that experience like how did advisors come into play in getting you into your new school and helping you kind of navigate the system? My first time in college I went to Catholic University I didn't know I had an advisor there was no help whatsoever to even go through your program evaluation any of that the second time around at Southern New Hampshire University I do have an advisor she sits she asks what do you like, what's your passion because when you're taking social sciences or courses math courses things that maybe are not your core requirements you want something that interests you otherwise you're not gonna fail but I didn't have that at Catholic University I don't know if that was something that just didn't happen at first and now it's something they've implemented in college now but it helped yeah. Or I guess with Nova Mike's experience with going into like I said the medical field it was better to go to that campus and talk to the advisors there they seem to be really on point they knew exactly what you needed and what's nice is they have information sessions which are now on YouTube that you can watch and it tells you specifically these are the classes you need these are the classes they recommend you take and these are the classes that you will be taking in this course so it really had a nice guideline so you kind of knew what to expect and what you should complete. Were there any difficulties in transferring your credits from your previous college experience to where you guys are now? I think some of them didn't transfer going from I guess semester base to quarter base but overall and also having taken biology it was over 10 years so having to retake that overall it was a good experience I think it was fine you know as long as you gave them those three weeks they needed you're good. So I know all three of you have children and one of the things I think a lot of people are thinking about now is what kind of support services can universities offer to student parents? What have your experiences been with the level of support that your schools have offered when your schedules don't necessarily fit the tradition of what people figure college students would have to deal with when you have to take care of a sick child or just attend to just the day to day needs that your child needs? I think for myself it's been very difficult to being a student parent in college not traditional student the path can be very unclear as to where you need to go and what you need to do in order to be successful and I was fortunate enough to have a close relationship with my advisor and just be up to date with anything for my situation my wife she's currently breastfeeding we have a three month old and they're able to provide services to coordinate scheduling for a breastfeeding area a private room for her that's something that I've been able to just witness just with having our newborn here and for myself as well. I believe just being up to date with the resources that are available to you whether it be supplemental resources, government resources that's always a very important piece and key to a student success so that's something that I've really benefited from. What about you guys? I haven't really had to utilize any resources I do know that they have a room available for sure the case rise but I'm very fortunate I have my family my mom is here with us helping out so I can finish my school or my course but honestly I haven't been able to utilize any resources if there are any. Yeah me either it's just if I have someone one of my kids home with a fever they're next to me my laptop is here and you just you hustle you get it done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean having had I feel like a myriad of experience you guys have been to four year schools community colleges, for-profit schools all of these different iterations within higher education what would you have liked to be different in your experience? What could any of these schools along the way have done to make your transition easier or to make it so that you could get your degree faster? For me I think it's the academic advisor part that is a necessity because for graduate retention you need someone especially when you're 18 I was 17 you're just your first time with adulthood and you just go get books go to campus figure out where to go how to navigate and that's hard the first time around if you don't have anybody that's will sit you down it's on your side. This time around I'm an adult, a real adult. So I can handle it myself but it's also good to somebody to walk you through somebody to just ask how's it going even to congratulate your milestone. I think that that is it makes you not just believe in yourself but your school and I think that that's important that's kind of the main thing it's you know supposed to be a community and it helps this time around yeah. I'm transferring to George Mason University in the fall so I've only been a witness to the community college experience and I think the most important word in community college is not college but the community portion and that's something that I can definitely attest to just feeling the sense of community within the college there are many groups and organizations that help supplement your success and the only thing I really would have changed was having access to childcare on campus just because it didn't hinder my success but it would have made it a lot easier and maybe would have accelerated my progress that's really the only thing I would have think benefited from as far as having that extra resource on the campus. I often wonder about costs and how transparent schools are even if or even high schools are as you're embarking on a college career what was your experience or what was your understanding of how much it would cost for you to get the college degree? I don't know, first time around I didn't pay attention to anything. I feel like I was a baby but and I feel like I was fortunate enough to have successful parents so I think they just said just go apply to wherever you want I wasn't somebody who applied for financial aid I did this time around and I did apply for scholarships this time around but when I was younger it was I had every opportunity so I didn't have that problem at first. When I was, when I first started out I was very fortunate to have a qualify for two scholarships so that helped out the first semester but going into just when I started the community college I did utilize the Montgomery GI Bill I served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves and so I was able to utilize that that helped out and I worked at that time but I wasn't fortunate to have any help from my parents and I feel like that's probably another reason why I took a break we really focused on my husband finishing school first and then we had our first son and I just was a stay at home mom I kind of really didn't know how we would be able to afford both of us going at the same time so I just put my full support into him and so when he was finally finished with his goals I finally was able to decide what I wanted to do and pursue that. As a first generation American the pathway through college was very unclear especially the payment part it was very intimidating with my family the first time in 2009 as I mentioned straight out of high school the financial aid, the FAF supportion was very intimidating just because it was very intricate information that you needed to submit but in 2014 when I wanted to get back in school it was also confusing but I was eligible to apply for financial aid I was fortunate enough to have been accepting to a scholarship program based at NBC as well that was able to provide me mentorship and financial support to attend college and I was able to trot along the way and earn a couple more scholarships that were able to help me pay the cost of tuition you know the parking pass, the textbooks and everything else that comes between school and work and family as well so. I'm glad you mentioned the textbooks and the parking pass and all those other costs that you know if you look at when schools break down their cost you don't, not very many of them itemize at that level and I'm wondering were there any points where certain smaller costs surprised you or potentially could have derailed you as you were pursuing your studies beyond tuition or room and board or any of those standard costs? You know as life has it accidents happen, you know things happen I've been riddled with car issues in the past year my wife and I on both of our vehicles and it's just it was to the point where the cost just would have been unbearable as to help us continue going to school and so we were fortunate enough to be in a community college which has all these other resources and one of Northern Virginia Community College's resources is the Working Student Success Network which they do help out students that wanna stay in school but they're challenging with these hardships or obstacles like car issues or family issues and they were able to provide me an emergency fund in order to get my car fixed in order to keep going to school. That's the same for Southern New Hampshire University if you have a problem you call it could be textbooks anything and now they have an emergency fund as well. How did that compare to when you were at a four-year university? Again, you were just lost you were kind of on your own and I'm sure that they've changed how I mean I can't say for sure but I'm guessing it just had to have changed because I don't know how any how a lot of people are graduating people have to be falling off you know freshman and sophomore year without that. I wonder as someone who's a member of the military as a reservist do you feel that the schools that you've been to were very welcoming of you or and had support services to help for your specific needs. I've spoken to a lot of veterans who say that they feel like they're kind of adrift at a lot of schools because there's no one there who is who understands the culture of what they've come from and knows how to deal with them. What has your experience been like? Currently at NOVA I really feel, you know that they have, you know the veteran service, you know liaison. They have offices there and I visited them and they were able to direct me to whatever resources I needed. So I feel like it's been they're very supportive. I think I get emails all the time with news announcements about military members and veterans and so far I think it's been great. Beyond just kind of the academic advisement side are there other things that you wish that thought leaders as well as administration within higher education would consider when thinking about non-traditional students. You know, I use the air quotes because there's so many students who are not 18 to 21 who have families, who have situations that don't necessarily fit into our need box of what we consider a college student to be. Where are we lacking as a society in being compassionate and thoughtful about how to help students like that? Well, I just, I feel it begins at the college level even at a community college. You know, you have to ask what are we doing? What can we do to improve? There's always that margin upper improvement and are we catering to the needs of students with disabilities? Are we catering to the needs of students who have been incarcerated or have an illness or have an unstable home? You know, where else can we reach out to these students and enable them to be successful and give them access to resources to be successful? So I wonder now that two of you are at the tail end of at least this first part of your journey for some folks. Is your perception of the value of your degree the same as it was when you went in as it is now? For me, I feel, because this is, I went back to school for a second career. So I hope this will be about that. Okay, so I worked for 10 years in the entertainment industry as an assistant director for film and television. And after having my kids, I realized I can't work 12 to 18 hours on set. I can, but I don't want to. I don't want to miss their milestones. So going back to college is a necessity, but I know I can't stop at just a bachelor's. So I'm continuing to get my master's and probably my doctorate because with a bachelor's I can become an administrative assistant, sure, but I can't do much else with it without experience, without a lot of experience. So I have to continuously keep going, keep going. So yeah, or either way. Yeah. I'll just share this. I still have one more year until I'm done with my program, but dental hygiene, I feel like is such a great career. And right now there was just an article out, you know, it's seen in really praising how you can either get a two-year or four-year in this career field and you can go anywhere, any state, you know. And I definitely feel like the value of it is great. You know, I'm already in the dental field as a dental assistant. I definitely think it's a great career field. I love, I love this. I know I'm gonna love this job once I start really working it. But I wanted to share that some of my classmates do have their four-year degrees already, you know, and they've had to re-evaluate and they're doing this because they feel more value in this degree at the community college than with their four-year degree. The value of an education means much more to me now than it did before. And I can say that, you know, I took the long way, I guess, took me five years to realize that hitting the class even got my job. And my wife, she just earned her Associate's Degree. We're both walking on Mother's Day in a couple of days. That's good, that's good. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I can add absolutely a fair witness to the fact that she just landed a job with Fairfax County School Program because of her Associate's Degree. So I do know there's a direct correlation between obtaining that degree and being successful as far as earning a better-paying job and being financially empowered. And for myself as well, I do see the opportunities opening up. Both my wife and I are gonna be the first in our families each turn, a college degree. So it's a major impact on our family. Findings in the study that I thought was interesting is looking at college education as a societal good. You know, at this point of your career where you are pursuing degrees or about to complete one, how do you see your position as a benefit to the rest of the society? What you've been able to accomplish and how it'll play out for the rest of the world? I think it had an immediate impact on my kids, my children. And this is something that I took from a colleague of mine is that what I'm doing now will have a direct impact on my children and future generations as well. So just changing that cultural, the academic and my culture where my family come from, where they weren't, they didn't have access to college or higher education and I'm able to do that now here. It will have a positive impact on my children. I can already see it. My children are already talking about it. Are you doing homework? They sit and do their homework with me. We're both writing papers on Dr. Seuss except for mine's 20 pages. Okay. But so I do think individually from my individual self it's great for my family. But I mean, don't we want a smarter society? Don't we want everybody to be smarter? Cause we make better choices collectively. So I think that college education is for everyone. What meaning did you select the schools that you ultimately ended up at? What was it about those colleges, universities and community colleges that was attractive to you and has it lived up to what your expectations? Yeah, like I said, I applied to a bunch of schools and I got into, I would say half of the schools that I applied to. I think it was just talking, touring, you know, that kind of thing. And a lot of the for-profit schools ended up acting like telemarketers, calling constantly, emailing constantly. You just have to span that. So those were out of, no question, I'm not going there. So I think it just was, if they had the program that I wanted, you can look up the faculty, what would they bring to you, like professors, instructors, the deans, that kind of thing. So you kind of evaluate a lot of things now. Yeah. Have lived up to your expectations? Yes. Okay. And I guess how much did the flexibility of the courses and timing play into your decision to go with Southern New Hampshire? Well, for me, online. And I'll attest that online is actually a lot of work. They're like, since you're at home, here you go, write eight papers. Yeah, so for me, it's extremely flexible as far as you're not attending a certain course at 10 to 11, you know, you can go in it whenever you can get into it. So it was, it worked out for me because with three kids under eight, it's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I actually worked with several dental hygienists who went through this program. I've worked with several of them and they could not talk enough about how great of a program it is. And I know a lot of dental offices that they do look at the students who graduate from this program in high regard. And I actually applied previously and I wasn't accepted the first time. So I applied, you know, I took more classes to make myself more applicable. And I got in the second time. But I mean, it's just, a lot of people know about this program. You know, it's well respected. And, you know, and it has lived up to my expectations. You know, the coursework, everything, it's very intense, a lot to get done in two years. And even where I am, I'm impressed with how far we've come as a class. And it's just great. And I think I really chose a great school and a great program. Yeah. Why Nova? It was the most important question for me before I even jumped back into school was, is it possible? And that's the barrier that a lot of people face when they're making that decision. Is it possible? And Nova was just the most ideal for my situation and my family situation. As you know, I'm sure they had to also deal with dropping off the kids at the bus stop, you know, being aware of their children's needs as well as their family's needs. My wife as well, her situation, it definitely would have worked out for her. Her mom passed away when she was 15. Her father passed away just for her high school graduation. She really didn't have any of that support that would have made it possible for her to be successful in college. And it did have the support groups and the organizations around it in order to enable us to succeed. So that's why, because it's ideal for our situation and we knew it would have been possible with them. I mean, having gone through this process, are there certain things that you wish you had done differently throughout your college experience or things that you would advise others against or advise them to consider doing? I would recommend starting out at a community college. You know, I really do, location is great. You know, there's so many different locations for Nova and if you're in Northern Virginia, they have such a wide variety of courses. And I mean, get a feel, try different classes. You know, it's affordable. See what you like before you decide to really jump in and invest even more money and more time into what could be, you know, the rest of your life. I just, I feel like everybody's situation is different and maybe that's the problem is there's no one to talk to before you jump in because like she said, it depends. If you go to a four-year college, you could end up with $30,000 a year in educational debt. So, and then you're a baby or even if you're older, you don't really know what you want to do yet. You should, like you said, start small and take as many courses as you can to figure it out. Get a feel. Myself would just be to give everything a chance just as they mentioned here now and don't give up because at the end, that's how it kills more dreams and failure of a day. So, we have time for a little bit of audience questions. Feel free to ask our amazing panel questions about their experience. First, I want to thank all of you guys. You're very inspiring, but I also have a question in terms of, we're talking about higher ed and the way higher education can better serve students, but couldn't we go back to high school and see how that prepared you or didn't prepare you for seeking out the kind of support you needed or having courses that made you more prepared for college? I agree. I had a high school counselor, but she, I mean, if you went, they would help you fill out your application, work on your essays, but it wasn't guidance about college, about what you would be facing. And I think that, yes, you're right. It should happen a lot earlier. I mean, I even think we could do workshops. There should be things that you're doing that have community colleges versus campus, like on campus, four-year colleges. There should be a lot more information that you get in high school. I was just gonna say, what I've noticed here in Virginia or in Virginia, there are dental assisting courses. There's all sorts of these workshops, and I wish I had that when I was in school. So I definitely think that that's a great benefit in the area. I don't know if it's specific to, I guess, the DMV area, but I think that that would definitely help. Like her, I did not have real guidance and I felt like it was my counselor that really kind of pushed me to do the Cal State the four-year when I really didn't feel like I was ready. And I think that would be a benefit to have that guidance. Instead of reaching back into the high schools and going back in there, and that's interesting because in I was in high school, junior and senior year, and I had a Papalix counselor, which essentially is a counselor that helps you transition into college. And for me, it wasn't the fact that the resources lacked. It was the fact that my effort wasn't there. I wasn't motivated at the time. And so I think the real question is, how do we find those individual students and how do we motivate them and let them know that there is value in college? And that's something that would have helped me and aided me earlier on. I wish all of you were available to talk with high school students because your experiences really would inform them. But what about career and technical education programs in high school? They're designed to give you an idea about possible careers, some that require licensing or certificates, others that require four-year degrees. Did any of you have any experience with that that would have enabled you to learn more, see more about what options were available? In my high school, there was a computer classes where we learned basic Microsoft applications. And it was a little certificate, but I didn't end up utilizing that. I mean, I did work on computers in the Air Force, but it wasn't anything that really helped me specifically, but I feel like it at least helped me be comfortable with those applications. Interesting enough, you said to go and speak high school students. That's actually what my wife and I do. We do volunteer time to speak at alternative high schools, especially teen parents, young parents, to motivate them to go to college and realize that there is value in college, in the college education. But in my high school, we actually had this part of the school called the Academy, which does offer that technical training like HVAC, Keating Ventilation and Air Conditioning, graphic designs and AutoCAD design. So those programs, for me, they were available. Yeah, I didn't have those programs. I went to Oxon Hill High School in Maryland and we had a science and tech program, a magnet program and then just high school for the people who lived in the area. And so the science and tech, I mean, you were in that program if you had the best grades. So it didn't necessarily mean you wanted to have that as a career. I did end up as an architectural student. I didn't stay there though. But we didn't really have any career stuff. There was no guidance, really. It was just kind of putting you in different blocks and then putting it all together. So yeah. Thank you all so much. One of the questions that I wanted to ask that I don't know that has come up quite directly is the course placement process when you were first kind of going into college. I'm wondering, you know, one of the big struggles that a lot of non-traditional students face going back to school is course placement and remediation. And I'm wondering if you had any experiences with having to take tests to place in the math courses or English courses and what that was like for you all. First time around, worst experience ever. Taking tests to place in math, for instance. And then ending up in calculus for differential equations at seven in the morning and physics at eight. And I mean it was horrible. Like the worst situation ever and then you don't, I mean I'm sure maybe I had an advisor but no one was there to help me ask me or to even say, well let's get you to a tutor. There was nothing. So yeah, it was rough at the first time around and someone should say no classes at seven and eight. Especially math, especially physics. But yeah. I did have to take a placement course coming to NOVA even as a transfer student. But I feel, I don't know. I kind of reached out to other students. Kind of found out, you know, like the hygienists, what did you take, you know? So I feel like kind of word of mouth from other students was beneficial also. But I didn't reach out to academics. I don't know if that answers the question. For myself, I did have to, you know, after five years you have to take some placement tests. English, math, you have to. And so in the math placement test I think that's where I was placing remedial courses just to be able to start at the college level. So I was there in those courses for about a year. They did provide me with, you know, the education that I needed to be successful and this past semester I just passed my pre-cock and applied calculus classes now. So, you know, it is a bit of an obstacle but you have to be willing to reach out to the resources that you need because I did seek out tutoring services from the campus and from my scholarship program and I was able to succeed because of that. Hi, I'm currently an undergrad at GW so feeling a lot of the same things you guys are feeling. And one thing that I know GW really tries to do with its students is have the resources available but not hold your hand. So they say, you know, when you first come to campus the resources are here but you have to come to us and you have to come find them. So I wanna ask you guys how you think the universities can do a better job of getting those resources out to students with advising and things like that. Or if it's more on the students to go and actively seek those out. I mean, we're adults so I do think that you should be able to go on your own. I don't believe in hand holding but you need to know that it exists. And I feel like now you have the internet and every school has a website and a college portal, like a student portal. There's ways to get it out there but you have to know it exists. If you don't then you're kind of just failing. And this time around with my school now you know of every resource, peer tutors, peer leaders. I mean, there's a million things, graduates, tutors. You have everything now, academic advisor. I mean, when I sign on to my student portal her face is right there and any message it. I mean, there's, you can't miss it. You can't say, well I don't have an academic advisor, no. So I mean, I think that you just need access to it. If it's not there then yeah, I don't see students succeeding and or loving their experience at school. Thank you all. Just a quick question back to the high school preparation for college. Did you get any information about alternatives during alternatives to college for your future? Did you, I mean, what is communicated to you is college the one way and work the other or are there any alternatives that you get to choose from? I think they're my experience becoming like a dental assistant. So there are adult community education courses in Virginia, ACE, and I, you know, that is available. So like I was able to get a certificate, you know, whereas dental assisting they do have programs, you know, year long programs. So that was kind of a career, I don't know if I'm gonna explain this correctly, but through the adult community education, which was $2,000 versus a year long program where that was 10, maybe $20,000, it's the same, you're gonna get the same job. So I feel like that is another avenue outside of the community college program. So there are those, that avenue, for those who don't want to, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's my experience. I actually wasn't exposed to any other in alternative to college. So either college or go look after high school pretty much, which that's essentially what happened. Go look after high school, now they come begging back to college. And so it's something that I think it would be very beneficial for high schools to have. If you're not pursuing a college route, what interests you, what do you want to do? It's important to be financially empowered, just point forward. So I think it would be very important. How much shopping did either or any of you do when you were making your college choice decision? How many schools did you look at? What kind of data did you look at? What kind of third party information did you leverage in making your choices? First time around, I think I applied to 15 schools a lot. Yeah, so, and then I went with my mom and my grandmother. We visited out of state colleges. We pretty much went everywhere. So I'm not gonna go with my first time around. My second time around, I was a little bit more focused. And with three kids, I had to look at on campus versus online, what those programs were. Again, with the faculty were, and I did the same thing for my masters when I applied again to look at who was teaching what. Because that to me is more important. I wanna actually get something from my degree. So I feel like when you do apply, you really need to shop. You need to look at everything. It's important, yeah. I guess for dental hygiene, you could go to the four year at VCU. There's Howard. There's another school, Fortis. And I definitely looked at the stats. What would it take to get into those schools? And also those other identities who have been there and what employers were they happy with their work with the outcome, I guess, of those programs. And Nova just had it for me. To be honest, I didn't do much shopping. I am a Northern Virginia Community College, but transferring to George Mason University, I honestly didn't do much shopping just because I was looking at the tuition rates and it really does deter you from even considering applying to the school and then there's this application fees that you don't know if you're just gonna waste there. So I chose George Mason because it is ideal for my situation, I'm located out here. It's convenient for me to commute back and forth. I don't have to consider being on campus in that expense as well. So that's something that it just kind of narrowed down my search, just what's ideal for my situation right now. Hi, I just wanted to ask if any of you folks have worked with the Career Services Center at your schools and if you felt like your schools have done a good job of preparing you for the immediate transition out of school and into the workforce in terms of here's how to have a successful job search or was it more just long lines of, oh, here's how to write a resume, good luck out there. For me, my career advisor, it's kind of like a five step process. So the first time around, I mean, I am assigned to someone who is specific to my major. So she only focuses on English majors. And then yes, she does do resume. We also do mock interviews. She helps me with search engines. We go through all the search engines, keywords, everything. Like it's a great process and she helped. It's a really good program, yeah. At the end of our program, next, in two semesters, I think it's right before we graduate, there is a portion where we focus on our portfolios. We do interviews, you know, so they kind of help guide us and we do have maybe reps from different companies, dental companies that come so that they do prepare us. So I am a work-study student for my college and I was fortunate enough to actually literally work in the career services side of things. I'm gonna try to be as non-biased as possible here. We do an amazing job. We, as a student, though I did benefit from, as you mentioned, mock interviews, we do have a website that specifically catered to our students, employers looking for community college students because they know that they need that flexibility. They provide resume reviews, they have internship and jobs website, a lot of tips and tricks for interview skills and we do have counselors available for that, for the case, per se. This sounds like one more question. Thank you so much again for coming. I am blessed in that I got to talk to them all on the phone ahead of time so I get to hear their stories but you guys are truly an inspiration. So as somebody who works in federal policy and you know, I'm seated here in Washington, D.C., if you could go to like your representative or if you went to the Hill, what would you want them to know about you as students and students like you and maybe like, if there was an ask, what would that ask be? That is a tough question. I guess it's not, it doesn't pertain specifically to me but I wish there was a better government assistance so that more people could obtain a degree because I don't think that school should just be based on socioeconomics. We get to go to high school and then you're done but you can't, when I look at, because I just was with my career advisor and we go through all of the job search and you're looking and people want a degree to answer a multi-line phone. When we're a generation with cell phones, we can walk, talk, search. I mean, so why do you need a degree for that? And so if you do want a degree, if the degree equals commitment or whatever that is, then why can't we open up education to more people? I would probably go up and ask Capitol Hill, is I want to be a contributing member to society. How can you help me have access to these resources and make it possible for myself and my family to succeed? For joining us, I found all of your answers really enlightening and very helpful. Please give us a hand. All right, guys, please stick around for our next panel, which we'll be starting now. Let's begin. Get off. Oh. Rob Navers. Pleasure. Debra. Nice to meet you. Oh my gosh, there was a follow-up from what to do. This is a very august group that I've managed to win on my way into although following students is a bad idea. Can we just say what they said? Yes. Fantastic. Great. Thank you, Rona. No, we, it's... Gosh, we don't even... All right, everyone. I know people tried to escape the room for coffee. Make your way back now. I'm gonna give it about one more minute, but we're really excited to get started with the next panel and I'm going to... Oh my gosh. I feel like this is like a school classroom. Everybody's just so excited about the results of our survey. Yeah, everybody, stop playing with the data tool. I know it's exciting. Okay. Now we're gonna talk about policy. We're gonna turn it over to the amazing panel. We have Rob Neighbors from the Gates Foundation, Dev Santiago from ExxonCN Education, Scott Rawls from Nova Community College, the president, and Cheryl Oldham from US Chamber of Commerce and Jose Luis Cruz from CUNY Lehman, so I'm gonna hand it over. Well, the first thing I'd like to do is recognize the last panel. It is never easy to talk in front of a large group, but I think the students that you just heard from just did an amazing job, so if you could recognize all of them, I would really appreciate that. We have the challenge of following amazing inspirational students, so good luck to all of you. I'd also like to thank New America for hosting this event and the research that we're here to talk about today. The new America research, it indicates a number of very important things. The two things that really stood out to me is that, one, Americans really do believe that there is a tremendous amount of potential in our higher education system, but two, they believe that the higher education system is falling far short of that potential. One of the particular numbers that jumped out to me was that only one in four believe that our education system is doing fine. That's not terribly surprising when you look at some of the things that we see every day. When you have a sizable gap between the college graduation rates of white and black students, of white students and Hispanic students, when half of all students who begin their college career don't make it to graduation, when low-income students are much less likely than high-income students to have a degree by the age of 24, it's this gap between the expectations of what education could, should be producing and what's actually happening that's underlying a lot of what we are seeing in the data that New America brought forward. At its best, higher education can be an engine for economic growth, economic mobility, and improving the lives of people everywhere. And that's really what we need to strive for and that's in part why we're here today. How do we get to a place where students can start and finish an affordable, high-quality education? What's standing in the way? What role do institutions play? What role does the state and federal government play and what can other stakeholders do to improve this situation? These are the big questions that in my mind sort of jump out from the survey results and we are very fortunate to have an incredibly experienced, knowledgeable panel here today to start to drill down on some of these questions. So we have the president of CUNY's Lehman College in the Bronx, Dr. Jose Luis Cruz. We have the vice president of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheryl Oldham. We have the president of my hometown school, Northern Virginia Community College, Scott Rawls. And we have the co-founder, COO, and vice president for policy at Excellencia and Education, Deb Santiago. So thank you for joining me today. What I'd really like to do is to start with the panel that we just saw. I think one of the things that jumps out to me is that panel does not look like the traditional view of what a college student looks like. These were not people who came directly from high school. This was not a group of folks who were spending a lot of time on Ivy-covered college campuses and this was not a group of people that had the ability to spend to go to school full-time. How do these experiences compare to your experience in looking at what the new college student of America looks like and what does that mean for how we need to think about higher education? Deb, if we could start with you. Sure, it was great to see that panel because I think they are representative of our students and I wouldn't even say they're the new students. We've seen that profile for quite a while. I think in public policy, we're inclined to think of the traditional student as that 18-year-old that goes straight from high school to college, lives on campus and finishes in four years. But that's less than 20% of students today. The majority of students look like our panel and have the stories and life experiences of our panel. They stop out, return, they go part-time, they go to community colleges, they're transferring, they're swirling. I think paying attention to how students are adapting to our current structure in higher ed and figuring out how we can help them is our commitment and should be all of our commitment to make sure they're successful as those on the panel. I agree with Deb. I don't think they're the new students but I think too often when we look at higher ed, they're the hidden students. And just to use an example, recently I noted that my state Virginia was ranked as having the, my one ranking is having the number one system of higher education in the country. And I tweeted that out, I was proud of that. But then I looked and saw that it didn't include my institution because it was only four-year school. So Lindsay and Ariel's experience was not included. When they left out my school, they left out 31% of all the Hispanic Latino college students in the state because they go to our institution. So I think a lot of it is not about new students but about that perspective of higher education that is much broader and it's really what most Americans experience as higher education. I think too what we heard from them is, especially when you think about the majority of students going to college now, is they're going because they want a job, right? They want to economic security, they want to advance their position, they want to find that thing that is gonna help their family and help them to grow personally. So it's less about, it's just interesting to me and I think sort of instructive to think about that really is a core purpose of post-secondary education. Is not just global thinkers and are we good citizens, which is also really important, but what are we doing to help students of all ages to be successful in that transition into employment? I think what's interesting is that only those that are accustomed to talking about higher ed from the perspective of research one elite institutions are surprised when they see the type of panel that we have here today. The fact of the matter is that our public two year and four year schools across the country, these are the students we serve. And these are the schools that are actually providing the tools and the resources for the new America to be able to succeed. So at Lehman College, I'm proud to be in the Bronx in New York City, we have about 13,000 students that are in undergraduate and graduate programs and we also serve another 13,000 in workforce development. And what you will see is that 50% of our students have a household income of less than $30,000. The median age of our students is 27. And so 80% of them are students of color. 90 different languages are spoken at their homes. So it's not a surprise to those of us that are in the two year and four year public sector and we would very much hope that the policy perspective and the practices that would come out of Washington and our state houses would recognize that and make the investments needed so that we can make this new America greater. I would say that part of our challenge though is that we are not measuring for these kinds of students either, right? I mean, both of your institutions that we're all looking at the graduation rate, which doesn't include these post-traditional students, right? What would you need to do in order to measure these students? What is the next step that we have to take? Yeah, just a second. I think we all think about this a lot of the students we have, right? Better data, right? Better data. I think it's better data, but it's also more accurate data, right? So if you have graduation rates which are only first time, full time freshmen completing within 150% time, you've excluded the majority of students who are like those that look at this panel who were adults stopped out, returned, transferred from a four year institution to a two year institution. None of our traditional, our graduation rate doesn't capture any of those students. So it's certainly, if you're all said, better data, but it's also, are we using any data to capture that? And when we look at institutions, are we paying attention to who they're really serving and measuring that? Because we've learned, we measure what we value and you could be sending messages, we don't value the very students that we need to get educated for our workforce. I would just echo that to say not to make sort of K through 12 comparisons because I know higher ed really doesn't like that, but I mean, we were there 10, 15 years ago, 15, I guess, plus years ago where we didn't, we weren't measuring, as you said, we value what we measure, we measure what we value. We weren't necessarily doing that in K through 12 and there's an ability to sort of hide people, right? When we don't have attention paid and I think that can be said in higher ed as well. If we don't know how minority students are doing and disadvantaged students are doing, then how can we expect that people will provide the attention and support and that's necessary and needed? I think we also have to step back and say, what is success? A lot of times we think within institutional, within an institutional framework. And so what is success? For me, looking, most of our students who are coming to us are hopefully trying to get, or they're coming to us with a goal of trying to get a bachelor's degree and since most of our students will transfer without an associate's degree, what I care about is six years later, do they have a bachelor's degree? We need to pay attention to that. For students like Lindsey and others who are coming because their goal is to get to the workforce, it's not just getting a job, but within a period of time where they're making above 60,000, which is the middle class threshold. So I think we have to step back and say what is success over time because the way we traditionally look at college success is very much within a specific institutional framework, completing at that college and moving forward and that's really limiting when you look at what is real success. Jose, Scott, from, given what Scott has just said, how does that perspective change the way you are running your institution? How does that perspective sort of filter into the way that you are running your schools right now? So at Lehman College, one of the things that we have committed to just in the past couple of months is that what we've come to realize is that to really advance our mission, we have to really step it up. So just recently, the Quality of Opportunity Project named Lehman College as number four in the nation for mobility rate. We have traditionally been shown to propel more students from the lower income brackets to the middle class and beyond than most public institutions across the country. And so we saw that and we felt very proud about that. But then if you go back into the archives of the Quality Opportunity Project, you will find that the student, the Bronx, the place that we serve is among the worst counties in the country in terms of the possibility that a young person in the lowest income brackets could actually have upward mobility. So there's a lot of inequality there. So we decided that we needed to step things up and what that has translated to is a very concrete goal of doubling the number of high quality degrees and credentials that we produce by the year 2030. So we wanna do 90,000 degrees and credentials by 2030. That's double what we would do if we just kept in steady state. And what that is forcing us to do is we think given the limitations that we have financially, how do we structure our efforts and even the way we go about measuring our success so that we accomplish that. So for example, do we need to continue to be proud about the fact that 50% of our students are first generation or should we do more about educating the parents of the kids that are currently in K-12 so that they can then get to a better place financially and also model to their students that college is a possibility and worth pursuing. So it's really changing the way we think about is it how we produce our work. It's not only about graduation rates over enrollment levels, it's also about the type of programs and services that we provide to all of the people in the Bronx. So hopefully we can continue to higher educational attainment. I would say there are two ways. Just like Jose, I think we at our institution, we think about very deliberately as a core focus is socioeconomic mobility. I mean, that is the purpose of our college. We do that through education. We talk very deliberately about the American dream and our role in that regard and what that means. And so we think in that term, and that's why we think in terms of keeping costs down but keeping resources where we can to support students to move forward in that regard. So I think that influences our thinking. I think another way of our thinking or I'll use the term pathways. I mean, we have certain students that are pathway students but we think in the context of pathways, we fit, our students are on a pathway that just goes through NOVA. It is not just NOVA. So we reach out into the public schools with our counselor to pull students in who may not have a pathway through what we call our Pathways Program. But we also look very deliberately in terms of how our students move forward to our partners, our great partner like George Mason where we have a new relationship but it's just an expansion on the existing relationship because our students pathway like ours will flow through George Mason. So it's a notion of looking at what we like to say with our George Mason partner inclusive excellence, not exclusive selectivity but inclusive excellence and I think that ties back to the socioeconomic mobility purpose of institutions like ours. One of the things that I find interesting is how often this community, the country come together to talk about the state of education and one of the things that as I was preparing for this Cheryl, you were the executive director of the Spelling's Commission on higher ed back in 2006 and there was a quote that I pulled out from the report. It's good. A lack of clear, reliable information about the cost and quality of post-secondary institutions along with a remarkable absence of accountability mechanisms to ensure that colleges succeed in education and educating students today. This was one of the lines that drew a lot of attention and it's not dissimilar to some of the issues that we're continuing to talk about today. I think as we try to move forward and improve the state of education, I think one of the things that people are looking for is evidence that there has been some progress over time and I was hoping the panel could address this issue. What progress have we made in terms of progress on in post-secondary education? I think significant although not enough from I guess it was 10, 11 years ago since the report was released and I think we're definitely having not just a conversation but action related to better data, transparency, a focus on outcomes that didn't exist back then or maybe existed in smaller pockets. I don't wanna suggest that nobody was doing that or focusing on that back in 2005, 2006 but I think there's definitely been an advancement in that and I think from my perspective, that transparency, that focus on outcomes, better data, all of that, that just serves to improve the system as a whole and benefits everybody but particularly the students. Yeah, I think the challenge is those of us who are insiders in higher ed, we know when we look at the raw numbers that it looks better. I was struck in the survey at New America that that's not the perception of the broader policy that we're doing well. In fact that we aren't and we need to do a lot better and so it's heartening when you hear things like President Cruz saying we're committing ourselves to double where we are, we're accelerating and that's significant. At Excellencia our mission is to accelerate student success not just increase it because we're looking at equity gaps and saying increasing is great but if we're gonna close gaps we've gotta accelerate and that means doing more and being explicit and being intentional and I think that's a conversation we're not having enough externally so when you hear a survey like this saying they believe in higher ed but not that the institutions are doing well enough. I mean they don't hear stories like Nova and Lehman but they also aren't hearing organizations committed to acceleration and we need to do right by students by focusing on what we can do to accelerate not just increase. I think overall with higher ed we know we have over years over decades we've made great progress in terms of access but we still have much greater progress to make in terms of ultimate completion. Our graduation lines at this time of year should be longer given the registration lines we have in August and that's something that is not easily solved that's something we have to keep focus on and be very deliberate about because access is one part of success but we have progress towards completion and actually completion we have to be very diligent about staying focused on that. What are the main barriers towards to accelerating that progress that we're all talking about? Well, there are the barriers. There are the barriers that we put in the way. I was heartened to hear Ariel and Lindsay in fact I'm reluctant to speak because I can only make us look worse from this point forward but I do know there are students who do struggle to find their advisors. That's not every student's experience and so how do we, that's something that we're trying to do is make sure that every student has that kind of experience and so making sure that students know that every step forward is a step forward. What is that path? And then having the advising and those types of supports, we try to take those barriers out. I think one of the things we struggle with is something Ariel brought up is those barriers that we can't control. A lot of times our students, it's not the challenge of getting into our college but staying in our college and so as he described, a lot of times they're a carburetor away from dropping out and so it's this issue of how do we have, so we do have a program as he pointed out but it is not big enough or systemic enough to be able to reach all those students who have a carburetor issue or a good example is on-site daycare at a college like ours or those types of things. So I worry a lot about the things that we do that create barriers but then there are the things that are the life things that get away and how do we address those and that's something that keeps me up at night. I think that's case and there's so much conversation about the challenge of affordability and I think it was a good point Danielle raised. It's not just tuition and fees. It's paying for that tank of gas to get you to and from. It's as clear as can I find a parking space where I'm going so I can get to my class on time and get to work on time and we often don't think in ways that are as pragmatic as you heard our panel talk and how from an institutional perspective do we support students where they're at rather than trying to force them to be to fit the mold that we think they should be fitting in and I think there's that tension about the student's responsibilities and institutional role, their barriers in each of them and our focus is we can do a great job analyzing them. What are we doing to break down those barriers or help students jump over them or create the ladder that they can climb over it? That to me is the challenge because I felt like I could name 20 chat barriers right now depending on the post traditional profile and if we stop at the barrier identification and don't figure that out I think that's where we fail our students and we have to do a better job of that. I would say also that there are many barriers but from a structural perspective what we're seeing in particularly in the two year and four year regional ecologies and diversity sector is that the needs of our students, the demands that they have in order for us to be able to serve them well translating to increased operational costs that when combined with reductions in state investments cause even well-meaning campus communities difficulty in terms of how to manage that. So how has state disinvestment translated in the past several years to the current reality in two year and four year institutions? Well, it has led to a decrease in the percentage or the number of full-time faculty that we have available that is available on campus full-time to provide not only teaching but also guidance to the students. It has increased reliance on part-time faculty that are not on campus as much. It has increased the number of students that we need to serve in a particular class. So the student faculty ratios have been affected. It has forced us to defer maintenance in our buildings because we need to put those money towards emergency funds and other areas. It has forced us to delay updating our technology. So we're not providing the best tools for the education and I could go on and on. So it's going to the myth and reality of the survey that was put out, this sort of understanding that states are and the federal government is investing more and more in higher ed and that's really not the case. Then how is it that if we realize that's not the case we would be surprised that we're having more difficulty now even with the games we've made in recent years meeting the demands of the students that we are now serving? I guess close this one question with a comment from the employer community and maybe barriers that we've put in place. I mean we, employers, the business community certainly has a major role to play in partnership and making sure that it's clear and understood what are the credentials, what are the competencies, what are the credential requirements, what are we looking for so that institutions aren't flying blind and students aren't as well and that we're trying to do this at the chamber to really think about how do we provide support to employers so that it isn't just the knee jerk, I've got to have a bachelor's degree, I'm up credentialing everything because it's a sorting mechanism for me, right? It's supposed to mean something. I'm supposed to be able to say you have a bachelor's degree and you're gonna come to me and you're gonna have a level of skill and expertise and knowledge that's gonna be what I need and we hear this all the time, it's not quite happening all the time so we need to do a better job and so we're trying to do that at the chamber to sort of say here are some strategies, some resources for the employer to need to get better and more sophisticated about that so that we maybe can get a handle on this up credentialing piece and we can be clearer and more transparent about what our needs are. We could say on that point just for a second, I think that from what we heard from the last panel, this the connection between education and employment is increasingly critical as we think about it and one of the things that is occasionally somewhat jarring is you see that employers are struggling to fill positions but there's a mismatch between the positions that they are attempting to fill and the skill sets that our new students have. How do we address that issue as a community? We would all be really, really wealthy if we had figured that out. I mean, I think there's just so many factors, right? We're struggling with this and thinking about this all the time at the chamber and what role can we play as the employer community to try to fix this and some of what I just talked about in terms of our talent pipeline management initiative with really trying to help employers to get in the driver's seat of a lot of these conversations so that when we are talking about, I mean, we talk about workforce development and job training and we sort of talk about the workforce system as kind of separate from higher ed and higher ed is like the biggest workforce system we have in this country. The money in higher ed is outpaces anything in our workforce development system but we sort of separate these things so we're trying to think about that in a different way and really the changing economy and we all sort of have to be much more nimble and able to sort of manage that risk of what is my future gonna look like? Is my job gonna be here in five years? Is it gonna be here in 10 years and what is the employer responsibility there? What is the government responsibility there? What is the individual responsibility there when we're talking about automation and new technologies and even trade and other things and so that's a whole, that's like future conversation but I think it's really relevant for what are we doing in higher ed? What are we doing in K through 12 to make sure that we're really preparing people for the economy that is here and the economy that is just gonna continue to change fast and furious. I think the students did a great job of talking about the importance of advising, know a system that's so complicated and a structure and I was thinking, what if we did that for our employers as well as our institutions? It's, you don't know and just like our students don't know the low and confersion students, why would we expect the employers or the institutions when it's also moving so fast for them as it is for our students and I have this, the name of a publication in my head, kind of framing, not blaming kind of a thing, like the business isn't doing the right work or institutions aren't doing it or the student isn't doing right and it would be great if we went past the point of fingers and come up with a structure like employers want good employees. Okay, let's agree to that. Students want a quality education that will get them employment and civic leadership and if we could just start from that premise, could we look at things differently than we currently are, which is one system where approach isn't doing the right job. I think one thing that I meant to say is not to beat a dead horse around data but we know what jobs are, at least now, right, like what jobs are going unfilled, what industries are growing and by and large, people don't really leave, you know, as it mentions, we're a mobile society, people don't leave that far from their area, right? So why aren't we able to, and we're doing this again with another initiative we have launched my career with Strata and AIR and Gallup where we try it and we're only in a handful of states because we're only in those states that have the ability to have that really good outcome data but why can't we, at the high school level and for returning girls, why can't we give them that information that says, okay, here are the hot jobs in your area, here are the skills that you need and oh, by the way, here are those, here are some institutions that can get you there. You may not know exactly what you wanna study when you're in high school but I could give you an idea of maybe what jobs are available and it might get you thinking, it might help you to have some focus, oh, and it also might help you to think, you know what, I could go to NOVA and they've got a great program, great outcomes, I can transfer and I don't have to go to the elite four year institution and get myself in a ton of debt. There's that really important and I know a lot of people have a lot of tools out there but how do we make sure we can get those into the hands of folks? I mean, I think that was a little bit of talked about that a student panel is just not, you know, word of mouth and which is all very important too but I think some real hard, you know, outcome data is useful as well. I think there's a reason why two institutions like ours are focused on workforce development. It's not just for workforce development's sake but it goes back to that socio-economic mobility focus that if you're trying to accomplish that then what you're trying to do is connect to those opportunities and that's where programs that are labeled workforce development come into play. I think for us to be successful at that, one is we have to use data and the good news for us is that we have new types of data now. We're not just dependent on how many jobs are out there looking at that but looking at how many vacancies are out there and so that gives us information as well as gives our students information so it's about how we use that and how we get that in front of our students. We also have to be very diligent as institutions to pressure test data that means interacting with those employers and, you know, when we have our ideas some of those are crazy pie in the sky and some of those are on target we have to know what's on target and because that helps our students make that connection. Our students are savvy though because they look and they try, you know, they do everything they can to figure this out and I'll just give you a phenomenon that's happened at NOVA within three years. I mean if you look at our region, our four county region we now can tell that last year we had 17% of all the cybersecurity vacancies in the country within the region that our college served. We have a program that's grown from 50 students in cybersecurity to 1400 in three years. Now to do that though that puts tremendous challenges on us it means acquiring new facilities renovating facilities, getting faculty particularly adjunct talent in fact but other faculty how do we do that and so you have to be nimble in doing that but then we have certain challenges and I would say that different institutions face different challenges. We face, you know, we're on the good side of the jobs part but we have the challenge we have lots of jobs in our area that need people and then you look at other parts of the country and they have people who need jobs and the challenges are different so we have to think in the context of the regions in which we serve but that's why the connections are so important between the employer community and the educational community particularly for institutions like ours that are in the socioeconomic mobility end of it. And I agree it's similar to ANOVA it's in the case of Lehman College those connections with the employers not just the data but the actual conversation with them is really helpful in the way that we not only work with our workforce development certificate programs but also with our undergraduate degrees computer science being one good example I would just add another important partner is unions but we've found that Lehman College that one of our better ways to calibrate how our programs need to move in different directions to accommodate the needs of our potential students and the community is to work with for example the 1199 SEIU union and they have funds that are available so that they can help cover the cost of upgrading the skills of their union members and they come to us and they say we have identified that if you put together this particular program that will develop these skills for our union members they will be able to go upgrade their job from a $15 an hour job to a $25 an hour job and we work together to put that program in place they help cover the cost and everybody's happy afterwards so it's looking at the data and having the conversations and creating those partnerships to make sure that we can react, namely One of the things that I might add there's also Lindsay struck on something in the first panel there's also a role that is not often recognized in perceptions of higher education that institutions like ours play and that's almost a finishing school role because when we look at certain areas she talks about our dental hygiene program we talk about nursing, cybersecurity colleges see this with biotechnologies where students have four-year degrees and sometimes master's degrees but they're coming to us to get a finishing skill now that doesn't necessarily mean that that four-year degree was a waste for them it's just how they're doing it differently they're using us in a different way but I think it's also how there's a misconception of higher ed that students, the traditional conception is students come out of high school and they go one place or another and then that's it and then we should measure that but the story of students is going to us to a Mason to this or to go to a college and come to us to get a piece and so that's the part that's often missed about the broader perspective of higher education and one of the things that I was tweeting earlier first panel because they had such sage comments but one of the things that students said was the important word in community colleges community is what you said and I tweeted that right away because I think both of the presidents here talk about what they're doing to help their community and economic development it's about finishing school it's about components that support unions and the employers as well and it's all in the service area where you are and how do we measure that how do we talk about the value add of an institution within their economic region and service area and the difference it makes and sometimes that's a little different than when we look at it at an institutional level at scale nationally where we're looking at metrics across I don't tell that story I think it also in terms of leadership perspective our goal should be not yes, do we wanna be the best community college in the nation? Yeah, that'd be great but the real role for us is to be the best community college for our region in the nation and that depends on how you build it for the community and so all of our colleges have to look different because our regions are different and what we do and I think that's something that sometimes gets lost I also know there's the challenge in terms of choice and there is the importance of the benchmarks and the scorecards but the truth is for many of our students like Ariel's experience his choice is really I gotta go to the community college in my community my choice is to go where I live where I can afford to do it so it's incumbent on each of us to rise to a level of excellence for each of us to serve the communities we serve because he's gonna go to the school in the community where he lives and that's something that puts a responsibility on all of us to raise the excellence broadly in how we work within our own regions. How do we do that? Because he's very lucky that he lives in Northern Virginia and has you as the president in a community college that's really phenomenal. I've only been there two years, I couldn't open my eyes. The predecessor was pretty great too. He was Bob Townsend, that was a great question. But I would venture a guess that that's not the case everywhere and it's true I think there's probably many, many who, I mean that is the option. That's the only option and so how do we raise that level of excellence and how are we measuring quality? How are we thinking about quality and all of that? I think it's about what we demand out of our institutions and I think within higher education you can be a great institutional leader and not necessarily be a great educational and community leader based on the choices that you make and I think the public should demand of its institutions that they be great, that the leaders in higher ed should be great educational and community leaders, not just institutional leaders and sometimes that means making choices that don't necessarily benefit your institution but you know benefit your students in your community and that's a tough, you get in those places all the time but that's something that I think the public should demand from higher education. Building on that question, how do we translate pockets of excellence bringing things to scale so that people have the ability to learn the best practices across all of your various enterprises and activities so that in periods where choices, I need to go to the community college in my backyard that there is the option to have true excellence in the choice that you are selecting. What is the role in policy making in terms of transferring the best practices across institutions? In my experience I think we pretty much all know what the best practices are. You ask anyone in higher ed a high performing institution, a low performing institution, they learn in communities, they do undergraduate research, they have outreach programs with the K-12 system, intrusive advising. What we need more is better practitioners and so when we're thinking about policy and how to drive that, we need to start investing in our institution so that we have the tools to translate those best practices into action. So it's a lot of professional development and leadership development. At the end of the day, because of the structural issues that I mentioned earlier, it's very difficult for poorly resourced institutions to be able to take their campus community to a place where they can execute consistently at the high quality level that you need to get the high return on those investments. So that's my take on it. I think focusing on the students too has an impact because when you have institutions like the two that are represented here, we have to be frank and say, look, to educate low income first generation students, this post traditional students is gonna cost us more in the short run. They need academic support, they need support services and at the time we're pressed against efficiency and effectiveness being pragmatic like our students were and they were talking about their options means we've gotta invest in the things that matter and are you gonna see the kind of race and success you want if you're not investing in the things that students need to be successful and I do think that's a constant challenge for us because the push pull between efficiency, we want it to cost as little as possible without acknowledging that there's a lot of need out there and strengths we can build on that I think that becomes our challenge in getting to some of the scaling up of effective practice. The other is that we do a lot of work and we call them evidence-based practices and we're not quite there at the best practice part because it does depend on the context of the situation and we've had people say okay this works for Latino students let's up and lift that effective program in New York City let's take it to Arkansas and implement whole class and what you realize there is there were a lot of those qualitative things that were also impactful, the social networks, the infrastructure, the connect with the professionals who are prepared to serve that population that are not as easy to quantify when you're developing the model and the hard part is that it's this hard work I know we always want the solution and if it works here it'll work everywhere and it can work in more places, but... That's a very good point I think because I think what that means is looking at what is foundationally best practice and success but not necessarily just that programmatic there is a rush sometimes to say you know Cooney, ASAP we can learn from ASAP you know cohorts and things work but not all of us should just say let's do that you know there is we need to learn from what is foundationally leading to student success and then learn from what each other are doing differently but we have to be slower to necessarily say that's it everybody do that and that'll solve that'll be the magic bullet and we have to make sure to include our low-income Christian students I mean I guess I mean the institutions I've been to where like I've got learning communities done and then you realize that commuting student that Latino student is not in there even though we know it works for them but they are commuting and they don't have time to go to the tutoring center as effective as it is because they gotta get to work so how do we then adapt something we know works for the student's reality and that's hard and look behind the scenes too because it's really too about innovation at scale how do you really scale at that level because it's easy to boutique it you know it's easy to boutique it and put a lot of more resource over here and get a lot of press about this right over here but how do you do it at scale that's the challenge and that's where the practitioners come in they really need to not only know the best practices but know how to adapt it to the current realities and take it to scale in reviewing high performing institutions in my previous life at the Education Trust we were looking at over 300 colleges and universities across the country that were making good gains in terms of graduation rates and narrowing gaps what you would find is that these specific programs boutique programs not only were not serving a lot of students but that they were serving the same students within campus and so the question is if you have limited resources how do you step back and make sure that a higher fraction of your total student body is at least being touched by one high impact practice two better yet and so that's really part of the challenge in trying to take things to scale is what is the right intervention for which students at what time that will disproportionately benefit the outcomes that we're looking for but did you want to do that because I will say it's kind of something about but you guys are doing it at NOVA with Pathway to Zach Laureate I mean you've scaled that significantly and I think that's what makes it strong because it is a scaled program I mean you've got 11,000 students from high school to community college on to Mason and so that's a scaled program but getting to scale is incredibly difficult One of the things that I'd like to touch on before we end up getting questions from the audience is I'm sure for all of you this is more than an occupation this is a vocation this is your passion and I feel like especially after listening to the students speak earlier this is a very human this is a very personal type of issue I would love to get from each of you some amount of conversation about the one thing that keeps you up at night the one thing that is worrying you about higher education right now and then two, I'd love to engage you on the one thing that sort of brings you inspiration the one thing that gets you up in the morning excited to take on a job that as we've all discussed is incredibly challenging Did you see the ring from the right side? I will say that part of what so I'll try to pick one I see so much potential and opportunity in the students of today and I, excuse me, up at night that we might not be doing right by those students who are trying to do everything right with the infrastructure, the resources, the support of what we're trying to do and so what can I do in my limited capacity but with the platform I have to send that message, provide that opportunity to waken people up to the students and the potential they have that's a framing issue but I feel like if I can frame it a certain way we'll pay attention to who these students are and we can make that kind of difference because the commitment, the resources, the responsibility is there it's just like we're not connecting at all as much as we could to accelerate so that keeps me up at night and then what gives me hope is things like that first panel when you hear students who every day are finding a way to make it work for them sometimes despite us and despite institutions and despite opportunity they're making it happen and that, I mean strength is my resolve to do more but it also shows that there is the kind of success that makes it work well. Well I feel incredibly blessed because I get to be surrounded by inspiration every day I mean our two students that were there today they are exceptional but I will tell you they're not uncommon they are out there and I'm surrounded by it every single day so it's just to have that kind of inspiration is just a blessing but on the flip side what concerns me is that the experiences they talked about is that for those students who, their success is not based on as the runner Steve Prefontain used to say it's not how far they got but the distance from where they started is that if they run into a challenge if they have a stumble if it's something we created for them or like you talked about your car experiences or the childcare experiences that can just knock you out of the game in a way for students that go to institutions like ours that would not be at some of the elite institutions that have all kinds of resources there for when that stumble happens or when that barrier happens and that's what keeps me up at night is that the difference between success and failure for them can be harsher based on those stumbles that they may not be able that oftentimes they can't control. I think I would just echo in terms of inspiration of seeing students like this have success and I mean it's happening every day. I think the biggest thing for me I think two things keeping me up at night on the sort of equity side and we work a lot with our partners in Washington on across education and we're just so challenged and I think it still is as a nation when it comes to how well are we serving the hardest to serve, low income, disadvantaged minority populations, country from K through 12 all the way up and then from the employer perspective as Scott said we got people without jobs and jobs without people. How is this, right? Lots of people sitting here and we got lots of jobs open and what are we doing to figure that out? There are jobs out there and then just this whole notion of the changing economy and I just think we fundamentally and I know I've been in enough conversations and enough dinner conversations and we all come together and wring our hands about what the heck are we gonna do when all of the trucking jobs no longer exist and what are we gonna and I mean that's a huge challenge in the nation from policymakers and from all of us in this space that really need to be thinking in a much bolder and broader way about what does all of this look like for the next 100 years and it may be radically different than what it looks like now. I draw inspiration from every day from my students, faculty, the staff, the community in the Bronx being part of a community of teachers, learners, scholars is very inspiring knowing what the role of higher ed is from the perspective of serving as an engine of opportunity, a vehicle of mobility, a driver of transformative change, that's very inspirational. So being part of that anchor institution in a community like the Bronx is inspirational but that's also the greatest source of worry and concern and keeping me up at night which is are we doing everything we can to live up to those aspirations that we have with regards to our institutional mission and in the current environment that we have from a policy perspective, those concerns are growing every day because the survey that we just saw indicates that regardless of ideology, there seems to be a perception that higher education is more of a social or public good than it is a private good yet a lot of the policy talk that we're hearing seems to be pointing in a different direction. So for institutions such as the one I serve in that's a very concerning thing. Thank you all. I think we're gonna try to take questions from the audience at this point. So right here in the front. Thank you very much for a very enlightened and encouraging discussion. My name is Mike Eustan and I have a question relating both to the scale, sustainability and the system disconnected issues that all of you alluded to. Cheryl mentioned the disconnect between the employment system and higher ed. And it seems to me very central to thinking boldly and boldly about the future is to reassess the chasm that exists in most policy systems in most states between the K-12 system and post-secondary education broadly defined. And if we're gonna move these issues to scale it seems to me essential that sets of initiatives in terms of state policy instead of depending on enlightened individual leadership that we have from both institutions represented here. The issues are so big. The demographics are so compelling that we have to kind of I think rethink K-12 and higher ed in most states they could be in separate continents and what incentives can be created because this is the pipeline. And I would very much appreciate the panel's reaction to what, to me is a transcendent issue. K-12, the workforce system, the higher ed system as well. I mean we're all in our silos doing our thing. And that's at the federal level and the state level and locally as well. And you're right, great leaders figure this out. We don't have great leaders everywhere. I think we can look at policies that drive greater integration. I'll give you an example. Perkins Career Technical Education. Just as an example. Our college received a little less than $400,000 a year in Perkins funding. Now we have a $270 million budget so that's not a whole lot, right? But could we use those resources to really push between integration between those programs that start and for pathways that really start in the high schools for students that flow through us? We need to figure out ways to make that happen. It needs to happen between how WIOA and Pell work together in certain ways. It needs to happen in ways that we push for articulation between community colleges and universities so students don't repeat so much courses in that regard. So I think there are ways to look at policy that is not just stays within institutions but promotes the integration for the pathways that the students really experience, which is from high school, oftentimes through a community college on through university. I think it probably made tons of progress but just thinking back to Rob's question about the spelling commission. I mean, we, you know, God forbid tried to talk about things like transfer of credit and articulation agreements and you would have thought we were, you know, I don't know what people thought we were trying to do but it was like, I mean, this is just sort of no brainer makes sense, right? But so, I think that's a good question. We think in policy, in transactional times, I think what you were talking about, Mike, is something that's transformational and that's why, I mean, we studied so much of what is happening at NOVA which is kind of the pathway to the baccalaureate. You've got like 30 plus partners from K-12 community-based organizations, higher ed, two-year, four-year and they're making it work and I think maybe it's because of the leadership but from a policy perspective, I think policy should be informed by good practice and not all good practice is scalable but if policy is about scale, how do we find the kinds of elements and models like that that work rather than forcing it down and do things like, you know, we're gonna force collective impact and all these partners that aren't authentic but are there things we can learn that policy can help sustain and support and educate about? I think that's the opportunity that's transformational and that's not what we're doing and honestly, that's not how we're measuring it. We measure transactions and that's a challenge when you're trying to be transformation. I would just add that there are models out there that we can adapt across states, across systems prior to joining Lehman College at the City University of New York, I was at Cal State Fullerton and they're serving us approvals at a time when all institutions in California were forced by law, SB 1440, to articulate with the community colleges and that was a very intensive effort that had to pay our faculty from individual departments in each one of the 23 campuses of Cal State with their counterparts in the theater community colleges but at the end of the day, we saw significant improvements in our ability to graduate students that transferred into Cal State Fullerton because they were coming in with 60 units and they were guaranteed by law that they can get their bachelor's degree with no more than 60 additional units and so if we can identify those policies and export them to those places with the right adaptations, I think we would be more successful. California spent on the cutting edge too with when Charlie Reid was cutting that system right to sort of reach back into high school and say 11th grade, where are you and are you on track to go to my institution and if you're not, let's figure out how we get through that. We'll do that now but that was like groundbreaking at the time. We've got time for one more question. Amanda Berkson-Scholkach with National Skills Coalition. My question is for President Cruz. It struck me as you were talking that you're doing at an institutional level what your students have to do at an individual level. You're improvising, you're patching together funding, you're braiding resources but most of the federal and state policy discussion is about the big research universities. So what do you wish that policy makers knew about what it's like to be you? It's not easy being green. I think it would be important for them to realize and not just leaving college of the City University of New York but that there's two year and four year public sector institutions in the public sector are really the ones that are disproportionately serving students in the US in general and particularly students that are low income and students of color that are quickly becoming the new majority. So that I would hope they would see that in order for our nation to be secure and prosperous moving forward they have to start looking not only at those elite institutions but also at these two and four year institutions and providing us the resources we need to take care to add value particularly given the deficiencies of the K-12 system, the disinvestments that have happened there to add value to those students so that they can contribute to society moving forward. There's a lot of innovation going on in two year and four year schools and we can really move the needle if more attention is paid to us. I think we're at a time at this point so before we break I just want to thank the panelists once again. It's been incredibly educational. So thank you. Thank you all.